Wednesday, 15 January 2014

Submitted to a Medieval Forgery, Part 2

Continuing
from Part 1

Seventh, the medieval Gospel of Barnabas is much
better than the Islamic scripture with regard to the prediction of Mohammad’s
prophetic ministry. In the entire Qur’an, there is only one verse in which
Jesus allegedly predicts Mohammad’s advent:

And whenJesus son of
Marysaid:O Children of Israel!
Lo! I am the messenger of Allah unto you, confirming that which was (revealed)
before me in the Torah, andbringing good tidings of a messenger who cometh after me,
whose name is the PraisedOne. Yet when he
hath come unto them with clear proofs, they say: This is mere magic. (Surah 61:6 Pickthall)

This verse, which belongs to the late Medina period
of the Qur’an, seems a bit troublesome for a few reasons. Although the
adjective occurring in this verse corresponds to the name Ahmad in
Arabic and thus links the supposed prophecy with Mohammad due to the similarities
between the Arabic names Ahmad and Mohammad, the statement supposedly uttered
by Jesus addresses the Jewish community. Accordingly, the reader may get
the impression that Ahmad will be
sent to Israel because Jesus appeals primarily to the Israelites. However,
Mohammad claimed to be a prophet primarily sent to Mecca in Arabia.
Further, Jesus’ alleged prediction seems to draw a parallelism between the
Torah and Ahmad, for Jesus claims to stand between the Torah and Ahmad and
represent present time whilst Torah represents the past and Ahmad the future.
Consequently, Ahmad is expected to come to Israel in the same way as the Torah
and Jesus.

Keeping this problem aside, Muslim scholars rushed to
search for some verses in the New Testament that could possibly confirm Jesus’
prediction in the Qur’an verse. The only Gospel they could abuse for the sake
of verifying the Islamic allegations was the one written by John the Apostle.
Jesus’ farewell discourse in John 14-16 became the subject of a lackluster controversy
between Islamic scholars and Christian apologists since the former focused on
Jesus’ promise of a Comforter
and astonishingly concluded that the promised Comforter was Mohammad:

“If you love
me, you will obey my commandments. Then I will ask the Father, and he will give
you another Advocate to be with you forever– the Spirit of truth, whom
the world cannot accept, because it does not see him or know him. But you know
him, because he resides with you and will be in you. (John 14:15-17)

Even though the description of the Advocate
(Comforter/Counselor) in the above verse as an eternal spirit rather than a
human being brings the Islamic assertions to naught, Muslim scholars argue
that the Greek word for “advocate” isParakletos,
which is very similar toPeriklytos, the Greek equivalent of the name “Ahmad”. The supposition
that the writers of the Qur’an insisted on identifying Mohammad as Ahmad
because they were aware of the similarities between the Greek word for advocate
and for “the praised one” and thus aimed to raise doubts concerning the promise
in John’s Gospel cannot be dismissed altogether. However, the context of the
verse in the 61stchapter of the Islamic scripture denies any such
affiliation and reduces the issue to coincidence. In John’s Gospel Jesus promises the Comforter only to
His followers in return for their faith in and love for Him whereas in the
Qur’an Jesus promises Ahmad to all the Israelites during His prophetic
ministry, disregarding the condition of belief in Him for Ahmad’s advent. This
difference turns the Islamic assertions into a legend having no basis in the
New Testament.

The writer of the medieval Gospel of Barnabas, on the
other hand, is not pleased with the cryptic and vague prediction of Mohammad’s
name in the Qur’an verse. Therefore, he repeats his basic strategy with regard
to Mohammad’s prediction by overtly distorting the Gospels and implicitly
correcting and ameliorating the Islamic scripture. The outcome of this
habitual perversion is the new teaching that Jesus is not the Messiah, but
His forerunner. Pseudo Barnabas attributes all the statements originally
uttered by John the Baptist in John’s Gospel to Jesus in his forgery, replacing
John the Forerunner with Jesus in the canonical writings. For instance, the
account below is the altered version of John’s Gospel 1:19-27:

Then the
disciples wept after this discourse, and Jesus was weeping, when they saw many
who came to find him, for the chiefs of the priests took counsel among
themselves to catch him in his talk.Wherefore they sent the Levites and some of the scribes to
question him, saying: "Who are you? Jesus confessed, and said the truth:
"I am not the Messiah."They said: "Are you Elijah or Jeremiah, or any of the
ancient prophets?" Jesus answered: "No." Then said they:
"Who are you? Say, in order that we may give testimony to those who sent
us." ThenJesus said: "I am a voice that cries through all
Judea, and cries: "Prepare you the way for the messenger of the
Lord," even as it is written in Esaias."
They said: "If you be not the Messiah nor Elijah, or any prophet,
wherefore do you preach new doctrine, and make yourself of more account than
the Messiah?" Jesus answered: "The miracles which God works by my
hands show that I speak that which God wills; nor indeed do I make myself to be
accounted as him of whom you speak. ForI am not
worthy to unloose the ties of the hosen or the ratchets of the shoes of the
Messenger of God whom you call "Messiah," who was made before me, and
shall come after me, and shall bring the words of truth, so that his faith
shall have no end." (Gospel of Barnabas 42:1-3)

Fake Barnabas’ manipulation of the original narrative
necessitates the deletion of John the Baptist from his own history and gospel.
The Gospel of Barnabas seemingly corrects the Qur’an too and saves it from the
problems caused by the occurrence of John’s name in it as Jesus the Messiah’s
forerunner:

Then Zachariah
prayed unto his Lord and said: My Lord! Bestow upon me of Thy bounty goodly
offspring. Lo! Thou art the Hearer of Prayer. And the angels called to him as
he stood praying in the sanctuary:Allah giveth thee glad tidings of (a son whose name is)
John, (who cometh) to confirm a word from Allahlordly, chaste, a
prophet of the righteous. (Surah 3:38-39 Pickthall)

And remember)
when the angels said: O Mary! Lo!Allah giveth thee glad tidings of a word from him, whose
name is the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary,
illustrious in the world and the Hereafter, and one of those brought near (unto
Allah). (Surah 3:45 Pickthall)

The fact that the Qur’an says nothing about John’s
prophetic ministry and does not relate the fulfillment of the divine promise
that he will confirm Jesus is a big problem for Muslim scholars.10. More to the point, Jesus’
alleged prediction in the 6thverse of the 61stchapter would perfectly
solve this problem if Jesus’ name were simply changed to John’s. This was
because John the Baptist prepared the way for the Messiah and predicted His
coming to Israel.
More interestingly, the structure of the Qur’an verse looks like the perversion
of the Baptist’s testimony to Jesus in John’s Gospel:

On the next day
John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God who takes
away the sin of the world! This is the one about whom I said, ‘After me
comes a man who is greater than I am, because he existed before me.(John 1:29-30)

In the canonical account John the Forerunner says
that Jesus was before him and came after him. This is similar to Jesus’
defining Himself in the Qur’an verse as a man between the Torah and Ahmad. Last
of all, the statement in the Qur’an verse following Jesus’ prediction is more
applicable to Jesus than to Mohammad:

And when Jesus
son of Mary said: O Children of Israel! Lo! I am the messenger of Allah unto
you, confirming that which was (revealed) before me in the Torah, and bringing
good tidings of a messenger who cometh after me, whose name is the Praised One.Yet when he
hath come unto them with clear proofs, they say: This is mere magic. (Surah 61:6)

In another Qur’an verse Jesus’ miracles are
enumerated and the Israelites are accused of considering Jesus’ work mere
magic:

When Allah
saith: O Jesus, son of Mary! Remember My favour unto thee and unto thy mother;
how I strengthened thee with the holy Spirit, so that thou spakest unto mankind
in the cradle as in maturity; and how I taught thee the Scripture and Wisdom
and the Torah and the Gospel; and how thou didst shape of clay as it were the
likeness of a bird by My permission, and didst blow upon it and it was a bird
by My permission, and thou didst heal him who was born blind and the leper by
My permission; and how thou didst raise the dead by My permission; and how I
restrained the Children of Israel from (harming) thee when thou camest unto
them with clear proofs, and those of them who disbelieved exclaimed: This is
naught else than mere magic. (Surah
5:110 Pickthall)

In the light of this verse it is more reasonable
to think that the person predicted as a prophet in Surah 61:6 was Jesus
rather than Ahmad because Jesus went to the Israelites and performed many
miracles, all of which were called mere magic by the Israelites. Mohammad
neither went to Israel
nor performed any miracles. This supports the idea that the writers of the
Qur’an started a chain of mistakes when they transformed John the Baptist into
Jesus while trying to claim that Mohammad was prophesied by Jesus. The result
of this mistake is not only a verse with an awkward structure, but also the
sudden disappearance of John’s ministry and testimony from the Qur’an.

Pseudo Barnabas
does not repeat the mistakes of the authors of the Qur’an, but goes ahead to
correct and improve the Islamic scripture by simply turning Jesus into John
the Forerunner and Mohammad into the promised Messiah.

Additionally, Pseudo
Barnabas objects to the cryptic presentation of Mohammad’s name as Ahmad
in the Qur’an. In order to clear all the doubts and convince Christians that
Jesus uttered the name Mohammad, fake Barnabas refers to the Islamic
messenger’s personal name. For instance:

Then said the
priest: "How shall the Messiah be called, and what sign shall
reveal his coming?” Jesus answered: "The name of the Messiah is admirable,
for God himself gave him the name when he had created his soul, and placed it
in a celestial splendour. God said: "Wait Muhammad; for your sake I will
to create paradise, the world, and a great multitude of creatures, whereof I
make you a present, insomuch that whoever shall bless you shall be blessed, and
whoever shall curse you shall be accursed. When I shall send you into the world
I shall send you as my Messenger of salvation, and your word shall be true,
insomuch that heaven and earth shall fail, but your faith shall never
fail."Muhammad is his blessed name." Then the crowd lifted up their voices, saying:
"O God send us your Messenger:O Muhammad, come
quickly for the salvation of the world!" (Gospel of Barnabas 97:6)

Finally, some Muslim scholars love and praise the
Gospel of Barnabas because they know that its writer forged it to save Islam
from the trouble and burden of looking for a ghost-like book that was
supposedly revealed by Allah to Jesus. Being aware of the fact that such a book
never existed in history, Pseudo Barnabas decided to write that kind of a
book himself and gave hope and joy to the Muslims who had become desperate
after seeing that their prayers and implorations to Allah for the discovery of
Jesus’ original Gospel had fallen on deaf ears. When fake Barnabas
witnessed this Islamic despair, he decided to interfere and help Muslims by
forging a Gospel and ascribing it to Jesus. Relevantly, fake Barnabas named his
forgery the “true Gospel of Jesus” right in its first sentence:

True Gospel
of Jesus, called Christ, a new prophet sent by God to the world:
according to the description of Barnabas his apostle. (Prologue to the Italian manuscript)

In order to present his writing as the true Gospel of
Jesus, pseudo Barnabas did not forget to consolidate the supposed authenticity
of his forgery by putting the following words into Jesus’ mouth just before His
ascension:

Jesus turned
himself to him who writes, and said: "Barnabas, see that by all means
you write my gospel concerning all that has happened through my dwelling in the
world. And write in a similar manner that which has befallen Judas, in
order that the faithful may be undeceived, and every one may believe the
truth." (Gospel of Barnabas 221:1)

Clearly, spurious Barnabas preferred adapting the
Islamic concept of the Gospel to the purely Christian understanding when he
endorsed the idea that Gospel (Injilin Arabic) is not
the name of a book given to Jesus from above, but the good news written by
Jesus’ disciples who wanted to give testimony to His words and acts. This he
did by being sure of the fact that the Islamic definition of the word “Gospel”
would add nothing good to Islam and the Qur’an.11

CONCLUSION

Submission to the medieval forgery named the Gospel
of Barnabas is still common among Muslims no matter how many books are
published to prove that the medieval forgery ascribed to Apostle Barnabas has
several discrepancies with the Qur’an and contains gross examples of
anachronism. In this paper I have tried to reckon the major reasons for the
Islamic submission to the medieval Gospel of Barnabas and compared this forgery
with both the Qur’an and the canonical Christian scripture.

The answer to the question WHY Muslims submit
themselves to the Gospel of Pseudo Barnabas reveals the mistakes and
deficiencies of the Qur’an on the basis of the perversion of the Christian
scripture for its adaptation to Mohammad’s teachings. Of the two scriptures
that aim to distort the Holy Bible, the Gospel of Barnabas is much better in
form and content than the Qur’an as it serves to correct the mistakes of the
Islamic scripture with the help of the traditional Islamic teachings and
commentaries unknown to Mohammad. In short, the medieval Gospel of Barnabas can be considered a corrected and
improved version of the Qur’an.

APPENDIX
Fake Barnabas’ zeal to replace Jesus the Messiah, an
Israelite, with Mohammad, an Arab, is manifested in his forgery in the form of
a supposed enmity and conflict between the Israelites and Ishmaelites. Since
spurious Barnabas believes that Mohammad is a descendant of Ishmael (an
Ishmaelite), he modifies some of the canonical accounts as a result of his will
to present Ishmael’s descendants as the counterpart of the Samaritans in the
original Gospels. For example:

Now on the way
to Jerusalem, Jesus was passing along betweenSamariaand Galilee. As
he was entering a village,ten men with leprosymet him. They
stood at a distance, raised their voices and said, “Jesus, Master, have mercy
on us.” When he saw them he said, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And
as they went along, they were cleansed. Then one of them, when he saw he
was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He fell with his face
to the ground at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. (Now he was a Samaritan.)
Then Jesus said, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one
found to turn back and give praise to God except thisforeigner?” Then he said to the man, “Get up and go your way. Your
faith has made you well.” (Luke 17:11-18)

Having finished
his devotions Jesus came down from the mountain with his disciples, and metten lepers, who from afar off cried out: "Jesus, son of David,
have mercy on us!" Jesus called them near to him, and said to them:
"What will you of me, O brethren?" They all cried out: "Give us
health!" Jesus answered: "Ah, wretched that you are, have you so lost
your reason for that you say: "Give us health?" See you not me to be
a man like yourselves. Call to our God that has created you: and he that is
almighty and merciful will heal you. With tears the lepers answered: "We
know that you are man like us, but yet an holy one of God and a prophet of the
Lord; wherefore pray you to God, and he will heal us. Thereupon the disciples
prayed Jesus, saying: "Lord, have mercy upon them." Then groaned
Jesus and prayed to God, saying: "Lord God almighty and merciful, have
mercy and hearken to the words of your servant: and for love of Abraham our
father and for your holy covenant have mercy on the request of these men, and
grant them health." Whereupon Jesus, having said this, turned himself to
the lepers and said: "Go and show yourselves to the priests according to
the Law of God." The lepers departed, and on the way were cleansed.
Whereuponone of them, seeing
that he was healed, returned to find Jesus, andhe was an
Ishmaelite. And having found Jesus he
bowed himself, doing reverence to him, and saying: "Truly you are an holy
one of God" and with thanks he prayed him that he would receive him for
servant. Jesus answered: "Ten have been cleansed; where are the
nine?" And he said to him that was cleansed: "I am not come to be
served, but to serve; O wherefore go to your home, and recount how much God has
done in you, in order that they may know thatthe promises
made to Abraham and his son, with the kingdom of God, are drawing nigh." The cleansed leper departed, and having arrived in
his own neighbourhood recounted how much God through Jesus had wrought in him. (Gospel of Barnabas 19:3-5)

Obviously, spurious Barnabas does not only change the
Samaritan in Luke’s Gospel into an Ishmaelite in his, but also binds this
modification to his basic argument concerning the identity of Abraham’s son to
whom the promises were made. The Qur’an, however, never makes the claim that
God’s promises were made in Ishmael or that God tested Abraham through Ishmael.
This is mainly because the writers of the Qur’an found another way of making an
association between Ishmael and Mohammad. Instead of basing his theories on a
racial affinity, Mohammad asserted that Abraham and Ishmael had been to Mecca and constructed the
Cube. The insertion of this allegation into the Islamic scripture illustrates
Mohammad’s desire to narrate the so-called construction of the Cube by Abraham
and Ishmael as hard evidence not only for the sanctity of the cube and the
rituals of pilgrimage, but also for the veracity of his prophetic ministry:

And whenAbraham and
Ishmael were raising the foundations of the House, (Abraham prayed): Our Lord! Accept from us (this duty).
Lo! Thou, only Thou, art the Hearer, the Knower. Our Lord! And make us
submissive unto Thee and of our seed a nation submissive unto Thee, and show us
our ways of worship, and relent toward us. Lo! Thou, only Thou, art the
Relenting, the Merciful. Our Lord! Andraise up in their midst a messenger from
among them who shall recite unto them Thy revelations, and shall instruct them
in the Scripture and in wisdom and shall make them grow. Lo! Thou, only Thou, art the Mighty, Wise. Andwho forsaketh
the religion of Abrahamsave him who
befooleth himself?Verily We chose him in the world, and lo! in the Hereafter
he is among the righteous. (Surah 2:127-130 Pickthall)

Since spurious Barnabas was unaware of these Qur’an
verses, he talked of neither Mecca nor the Cube in his forgery.

Footnotes

1Several articles analyzing the forgery named
"Gospel of Barnabas" can be foundhere.2All the references come from the Gospel of
Barnabas on R. Blackhirst's website (*), the English translation
having been made by Canon L. Ragg in 1907.3The high priest's statements here remind Jesus
of His previous confession and revelation of His identity, which is narrated in
chapters 92-93.4Surah 2, 4, 5, 21, 23, 43, 57 and 61. Most of
these references appear in the form of repetitions and pairs.5This summary recurs in the 5thSurah with slight variations,
forming another pair with the verse in Surah 3.6For example,this articlediscusses at length how the
Quranic narratives about Jesus and His mother in Surah 19 came into existence.7This articleexamines the errors of the
Qur'an concerning the Christian Trinity.8Thisis one of the several
articles that discuss and respond to the Islamic claims on the identity of
Abraham's son.9This topic is further discussed in the Appendix.10On this problem, see the articlehere.11It is highly disputable if the content of the
medieval Gospel of Barnabas is compatible with the Christian definition of the
word “Gospel” - good news - though. This is primarily because fake Barnabas’
assertions concerning the distortion of Jesus’ teachings have nothing to do
with the concepts of joy and glad tidings.